Stand out from other startups

Working with Wells Fargo allows us to learn from its leadership in financial services and to discover new use cases for voice technology.

— Gridspace Chief Executive Officer Evan Macmillan

Join It

Tap into our global network of business mentors, venture capitalists, and enterprise executives. We're here to drive innovation, not our financial return. And unlike other accelerators, we're nonexclusive. You're free to join other programs and find additional funding along the way.

Prove It

Breaking into the Fortune 500 market is a challenge, but we can give you an edge. So you can focus on what's next, our experienced team will test your concept to help validate its technology and market direction to prove your product is enterprise ready.

Grow It

Our goal is your commercial success. From day one, your company's affiliation with the program will enhance your industry exposure and position you to quickly expand into the enterprise marketplace.

Startup Accelerator: Applications closed

About

The Wells Fargo Startup Accelerator is a hands-on program designed to advance startups that create solutions for enterprise customers - inside and outside the financial industry.

Application, review & decision

We accept applications twice each year. The review process includes technical and executive reviews. We typically email applicants first-stage review results within one month after the application period ends.

Program initiation

Once selected, we'll collaborate on the working strategy between your company and Wells Fargo and, if applicable, assist in the execution of proof-of-concept projects.

Up to $500,000 investment

We fund each selected startup with investments up to $500,000. While we have a vested interest in your company's success, we're here primarily to encourage innovation, so Wells Fargo will maintain only a minority equity stake in your company.

6-Month program

Our intensive program helps companies understand what it takes to become part of the corporate stack. After the program, companies may continue to work with us on proof of concepts across different business lines within Wells Fargo.

Leverage our network

Test, prove, and grow your concept by connecting with business mentors, venture capitalists, and enterprise executives.

Uniken's mission is to make connecting safe. We ensure that our customer's Digital Channels have the controls required to survive zero day attacks which enables our client's to remain in control of their Digital Channel risks. Our product, REL-ID, offers customer friendly, continuous omni-channel authentication services combined with protections against failures of the OS and transport layer. Our transport layer control provides the industry's most advance white-listed connectivity control that reduces the attack surface of the whole digital channel. REL-ID further offers encryption services for persistent local storage. More +

Alpha Payments Cloud consolidates the entire payments world onto one Payments-as-a-Service platform, the AlphaHub, which enables banks, merchants, PSPs and ISOs to access any payment type, any solution provider, anywhere in the world. The depth and range of connected service providers and solutions span across the entire transactional, risk management and commerce solution spectrum. The AlphaHub's orchestration engine enables users to customize down to the individual transaction layer using conditional logic, leveraging each vendor's unique functionality and benefits.More +

Bracket provides a secure cloud-computing environment that meets or exceeds the requirements of even the most secure private data center environments, allowing the financial services industry to run extremely complex and sensitive workloads on the public cloud. More +

Context360 has developed the first autonomous mobile personalization solution that seamlessly integrates insights into mobile application use with contextual information derived from smartphone sensors to provide brand marketers with direct access to unmatched insights into user interests, status, motion patterns, and trends. More +

Eyeprint ID, created by EyeVerify, transforms an ordinary selfie into a key that protects your digital life. This patented, software-only biometric solution is 99.99% accurate and extremely scalable. In less than one second, employees and customers can experience password-free mobility and convenient, secure, private authentication. More +

Gridspace unlocks conversation data in enterprise communications. The company's software, which combines new techniques in speech recognition, natural language processing, and artificial intelligence, assists in the review and documentation of business phone calls. The company is backed by the Wells Fargo Startup Accelerator, SRI International, and Bloomberg Beta, among others. Its flagship application, Gridspace Memo, is in trials now. More +

Jewel Paymentech is a financial risk technology company founded in 2014 with a mission to develop intelligent risk solutions for the banking and electronic payments industry. Jewel's suite of solutions helps banks and payment facilitators conduct merchant due diligence and manage transaction fraud risks using predictive analytics. Jewel also offers automated real-time solutions to large merchants such as marketplaces, to identify illegal and counterfeit goods. In 2015, Jewel was named by SWIFT as one of the most promising FinTech companies in Asia.More +

Kasisto, the spin-off venture of SRI International and the creator of the iOS personal assistant, takes virtual personal assistants to the next level by providing virtual specialists. The company is initially focusing on financial services and working to quickly perform complex transactions on mobile devices through speech, text, and touch. More +

MotionSavvy is developing a translation tool for the deaf and hard of hearing by working with gesture recognition technology Leap Motion along with various mobile devices which targets sign language users for improved accessibility. Its goal is to provide the 370 million deaf and hard-of-hearing market worldwide with a cost-affordable product against current competitors. More +

Roostify is a web and mobile service that makes the home buying experience easier and quicker for everyone involved. Led by technology, real estate, and mortgage banking experts, Roostify provides step-by-step guidance in home and loan closing. More +

Leveraging in-memory technology from Spark and scale-out capabilities from Hadoop, Splice Machine can replace Oracle and MySQL databases, while increasing performance by 10 to 20 times faster at one-fourth the cost. The Splice Machine relational database management system (RDBMS) provides exceptional performance for simultaneous online analytical processing (OLAP) and online transaction processing (OLTP) workloads, enabling companies to unlock the insights in their big data to make decisions in the moment. More +

Zumigo is pioneering a new generation of mobile services predicated on providing deeper insights into consumer behavior to help secure transactions, devices, and identities. Its global solutions support onboarding new customers, separating valid transactions from fraudulent ones, verifying payments, and marketing to customers with location in context. More +

How we benefited from this program

How we benefited from this program: "We're very excited that Wells Fargo has selected us for the acceleration program. Working with one of the world's largest banks will gives us invaluable support to apply our proximity technology to mobile payments, build awareness around our brand, and accelerate our go-to-market." - Carlo Capello, chief executive officer of ProxToMe

Uniken

Founded: 2013

Located: San Francisco, CA

Uniken's mission is to make connecting safe. We ensure that our customer's Digital Channels have the controls required to survive zero day attacks which enables our client's to remain in control of their Digital Channel risks. Our product, REL-ID, offers customer friendly, continuous omni-channel authentication services combined with protections against failures of the OS and transport layer. Our transport layer control provides the industry's most advance white-listed connectivity control that reduces the attack surface of the whole digital channel. REL-ID further offers encryption services for persistent local storage.

How we benefited from this program

How we benefited from this program: "We feel that Uniken's innovative approach to Digital Channel security moves the needle from the reactive to the proactive, dramatically reducing the attack surface of an organization's services. It is great to be part of the Wells Fargo Accelerator program as they are designed to explore big ideas like ours that change the industry. We look forward to collaborating the Wells Fargo team as we evolve our system-to-system connectivity solution." - Bimal Gandhi, chief executive officer of Uniken

Alpha Payments Cloud

Founded: 2011

Located: Singapore

Alpha Payments Cloud consolidates the entire payments world onto one Payments-as-a-Service platform, the AlphaHub, which enables banks, merchants, PSPs and ISOs to access any payment type, any solution provider, anywhere in the world. The depth and range of connected service providers and solutions span across the entire transactional, risk management and commerce solution spectrum. The AlphaHub's orchestration engine enables users to customize down to the individual transaction layer using conditional logic, leveraging each vendor's unique functionality and benefits.

How we benefited from this program

"Despite the wave of payments innovation, there is a massive disconnect across legacy acquirers on how to capitalize on it. Working with Wells Fargo allows us to learn from one of the world's most significant and experienced banks and MSP's and draw upon its deep knowledge pool to continue to evolve our solution and stay ahead of the game." - Oliver Rajic, chief executive officer of Alpha Payments Cloud

Bracket Computing

Founded: 2011

Located: Mountain View, CA

Bracket provides a secure cloud-computing environment that meets or exceeds the requirements of even the most secure private data center environments, allowing the financial services industry to run extremely complex and sensitive workloads on the public cloud.

How we benefited from this program

"Our vision at Bracket Computing is to utilize the public cloud to fundamentally redefine the corporate data center. Our work with Wells Fargo and inclusion in the Accelerator Program is a great endorsement of that vision." - Tom Gillis, chief executive officer of Bracket Computing

Context360

Founded: 2014

Located: Sunnyvale, CA

Context360 has developed the first autonomous mobile personalization solution that seamlessly integrates insights into mobile application use with contextual information derived from smartphone sensors to provide brand marketers with direct access to unmatched insights into user interests, status, motion patterns, and trends.

How we benefited from this program

"Wells Fargo understands that innovation comes from many directions and industries. The Accelerator program is designed perfectly for leading-edge technology startups to apply solutions for the financial community that were originally intended for very different markets." - Ratnam Tatavarty, cofounder and chief technology officer of Context360

EyeVerify

Founded: 2012

Located: Kansas City, MO

Eyeprint ID, created by EyeVerify, transforms an ordinary selfie into a key that protects your digital life. This patented, software-only biometric solution is 99.99% accurate and extremely scalable. In less than one second, employees and customers can experience password-free mobility and convenient, secure, private authentication.

How we benefited from this program

"No marketplace validation could be stronger than strategic investments by giants in the mobile space, including the largest security software firm in world, the leading bank in the United States, and a wireless network operator serving more than 50 million U.S. customers." - Toby Rush, founder and chief executive officer of EyeVerify

Gridspace

Founded: 2013

Located: San Francisco, CA

Gridspace unlocks conversation data in enterprise communications. The company's software, which combines new techniques in the fields of speech recognition, natural language processing, and artificial intelligence, assists the review and documentation of business phone calls. The company is backed by SRI International, Wells Fargo Accelerator, and Bloomberg Beta, among others. It's flagship application, Gridspace Memo, is in trials now.

How we benefited from this program

"Connectivity isn't the issue anymore. It's making sure the content contained in each call is cataloged and analyzed. Working with Wells Fargo allows us to learn from its leadership in financial services and to discover new use cases for voice technology." - Evan Macmillan, chief executive officer of Gridspace

Jewel Paymentech

Founded: 2014

Located: Singapore

Jewel Paymentech is a financial risk technology company founded in 2014 with a mission to develop intelligent risk solutions for the banking and electronic payments industry. Jewel's suite of solutions helps banks and payment facilitators conduct merchant due diligence and manage transaction fraud risks using predictive analytics. Jewel also offers automated real-time solutions to large merchants such as marketplaces, to identify illegal and counterfeit goods. In 2015, Jewel was named by SWIFT as one of the most promising FinTech companies in Asia.

Kasisto

Founded: 2013

Located: New York, NY

Kasisto, the spin-off venture of SRI International and the creator of the iOS personal assistant, takes virtual personal assistants to the next level by providing virtual specialists. The company is initially focusing on financial services and working to quickly perform complex transactions on mobile devices through speech, text, and touch.

How we benefited from this program

"We are thrilled to receive support from investors with such deep knowledge and connections in the financial services industry. The tremendous interest we received in this round validates our mission to enable businesses to radically simplify and enhance consumers' daily lives through virtual specialists." - Zor Gorelov, cofounder and chief executive officer of Kasisto

MotionSavvy

Founded: 2013

Located: Rochester, NY

MotionSavvy is developing a translation tool for the deaf and hard of hearing by working with gesture recognition technology Leap Motion along with various mobile devices which targets sign language users for improved accessibility. Its goal is to provide the 370 million deaf and hard-of-hearing market worldwide with a cost-affordable product against current competitors.

How we benefited from this program

"MotionSavvy's acceptance into the Wells Fargo Accelerator program will help launch the world's first affordable communication option for the deaf. An estimated 70 million deaf people use sign language as their primary language, including myself, and experience communication barriers on a daily basis. MotionSavvy brings a new era of communication for the deaf that will have profound impact on the quality of life we deserve." - Ryan Hait-Campbell, cofounder and chief executive officer of MotionSavvy

Roostify

Founded: 2012

Located: San Francisco, CA

Roostify is a web and mobile service that makes the home buying experience easier and quicker for everyone involved. Led by technology, real estate and mortgage banking experts, Roostify provides step-by-step guidance in home and loan closing.

How we benefited from this program

"Technology that automates any lengthy process, such as the process of purchasing a home, is a welcome addition to both lenders and consumers who are looking for efficiency in a daunting process. We are thrilled to have been accepted into the Wells Fargo Accelerator program and look forward to working with the bank to further enhance our technology platform for lenders and consumers." - Rajesh Bhat, cofounder and chief executive officer of Roostify

Splice Machine

Founded: 2012

Located: San Francisco, CA

Leveraging in-memory technology from Spark and scale-out capabilities from Hadoop, Splice Machine can replace Oracle ® and MySQL ™ databases, while increasing performance by 10-20x at one-fourth the cost. The Splice Machine RDBMS provides exceptional performance for simultaneous OLAP and OLTP workloads, enabling companies to unlock the insights in their Big Data to make decisions in the moment.

How we benefited from this program

"We are proud to be selected for the Wells Fargo Startup Accelerator program. It validates the Splice Machine RDBMS value proposition to the financial services industry, where the need to more quickly manage rapid data growth to make more in-the-moment, data-driven decisions is growing." - Monte Zweben, cofounder and chief executive officer at Splice Machine

Zumigo

Founded: 2008

Located: San Jose, CA

Zumigo is pioneering a new generation of mobile services predicated on providing deeper insights into consumer behavior to help secure transactions, devices, and identities. Its global solutions support onboarding new customers, separating valid transactions from fraudulent ones, verifying payments, and marketing to customers with location in context.

How we benefited from this program

"Zumigo is honored to be accepted as one of the first members of the Wells Fargo Startup Accelerator. While current industry practice often waits for customers to report fraud that they notice on their accounts, Zumigo's innovative technology for financial services institutions such as Wells Fargo can detect fraudulent transactions before they affect its customers." - Chirag Bakshi, founder and chief executive officer of Zumigo

Steve Ellis

Executive Vice President & Head of the Wells Fargo Innovation Group

Steve Ellis is an executive vice president and head of the Wells Fargo Innovation Group, an enterprise-wide organization devoted to accelerating the company's delivery of next-generation, customer-inspired technologies, products, and services. Previously, Steve was head of the Wholesale Services Group, which included Treasury Management, Wholesale Banking Technology and Operations, Wholesale Social Strategies, Innovation and Research and Development, Wholesale Marketing, and the Enterprise Payment Strategies Group.

Vas Kodali

Executive Vice President & Head of the TechIndustry Partnership Development at Wells Fargo

Vas Kodali is an executive vice president and head of Tech Industry Partnership Development at Wells Fargo. Vas and his team drive relationships with industry leaders in information technology, universities, venture capital firms, private equity firms, and portfolio companies. His team works closely with technology bankers and executives to foster industry relationships, strengthen exposure to emerging technologies, and spur business development.

Braden More

Executive Vice President and Head of Enterprise Payment Strategy at Wells Fargo

Braden More is an executive vice president and head of Enterprise Payment Strategy at Wells Fargo. Braden and his team work across all of Wells Fargo to coordinate payment strategy, launch new initiatives, and represent Wells Fargo in the payment industry.

Puon Penn

Executive Vice President and Cohead of Wells Fargo Commercial Banking Service's Technology and Venture Banking Group

Puon Penn is an executive vice president & cohead of Wells Fargo Commercial Banking Service's Technology and Venture Banking Group. Puon and his team provide expertise, financial services, and resources to help innovative domestic and international companies focus on advancing new technologies and business models to solve some of the most complex problems facing humanity – global population growth, climate change and environmental impacts, and the ongoing fight against diseases.

Brett Pitts

Executive Vice President and Head of Product Management for the Wells Fargo Digital Channels Group

Brett Pitts is an executive vice president & head of Product Management for the Wells Fargo Digital Channels Group. Brett and his team are responsible for product development and platform management across digital media (web, mobile, social, multichannel, and labs and innovations) for consumer, small business, and wealth customers.

Bipin Sahni

Executive Vice President and Head of Research and Development for the Wells Fargo Innovation Group

Bipin Sahni is an executive vice president and head of research and development for the Wells Fargo Innovation Group. Bipin and his team are focused on future technologies and defining the future vision for customer interactions, mobile solutions, and authentication solutions along with big data initiatives.

Kevin Bouey

Kevin Bouey is a senior vice president and strategic planning manager in the Wells Fargo Innovation Group. Kevin focuses on enhancing payment strategy across Wells Fargo and investing time and funding to advance innovative startups through the Wells Fargo Startup Accelerator.

Benjamin Brinkman

Vice President & Business Lead, Wells Fargo Startup Accelerator

Benjamin Brinkman is a vice president and business lead for the Wells Fargo Startup Accelerator. His responsibilities include program marketing, sponsorships, and external partnerships, as well as assisting selected startups in enhancing their visibility inside and outside of Wells Fargo.

Chris Cherewan

Vice President & Program Lead, Wells Fargo Startup Accelerator

Chris Cherewan is a vice president and lead program manager for the Wells Fargo Startup Accelerator. Chris's focus is on the delivery and evolution of the overall program. She is also responsible for ensuring the program provides value to the participating startups and to Wells Fargo's business lines.